Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

[Daley]

Hello all, long-time viewer/first-time poster. I recently (re)joined the ranks of boaters with a '97 Sugar Sand Heat with the 120xr. As a relative newbie, I've been able to learn quite a bit from just poking around the forums, searching and reading the success stories of other posters. For that, a big thanks!

At this point, I have a boat that starts *every* time, whether in the water or not. However, it has only reached planing speed twice, and each time it was short-lived. What I'm looking for is advice and opinions. Here's what I think I know:

- Not being able to get on plane at all suggests to me that I've got a few things to look at: plugs, carbs, high carbon content in the exhaust (after all it IS a two-stroke), other? It seems to smoke a little more than I think it should, but I have nothing to compare it to. Plugs look -ok- but they're not new (yet). I'll have those in before this weekend. My question here is what the general consensus is on using Seafoam at this point? Is it worth a shot? I'm changing plugs anyway, and so for $5-$6 a can, why not? I know it smokes like no tomorrow, so I'm looking for opinions on whether to do this on the lake or not (I've already alerted the neighbors to my new toy enough )

Or should I be looking at something other than carbs/plugs/exhaust?

- I'm quite comfortable tearing into anything I have the tools for, (I'm not one of those guys that fixes things with a 12-pack and a hammer) but I know *nothing* about jet-drives. Sure the concept is extremely simple, but I don't know anything about maintenance, servicing, general up-keep. I do know that 50' of ski-rope only takes a second to ruin the day on the water when she's allowed to drive over it This would be the second lesson I learned quickly. Thank God it wasn't at 5000+ RPM!

What do I look out for, how do I know my impeller's still ok, what's this wear-ring I've read about, how do I fill the "fill" hole if gravity is enabled (squirting liquid "up" with my head below it has me baffled), why the heck isn't there a water/fuel separator, and anything else a newbie doesn't know to ask?

While I got the boat from one of those 12-pack guys mentioned above, it certainly appears clean and somewhat cared-for, and has a couple stickers on it from different dealers who have serviced the boat for the only other owner the boat has had. When I got the boat, I watched him get the remains of his ice and such out of the built-in "cooler", and water was draining out of the plugs in the back - this suggests that he had it on the lake right before I took ownership, but given the business transaction I can't be confident it was running as it should. I don't have a ton invested in it, but I don't want it to be a money-pit either. Sure I know the old saying about the big hole in the water, but I'm okay with the clich? of "ya gotta pay to play" - to a point. Maintenance is mandatory, but not if I have to do it every time I want to take the boat out.

Oh yeah, I was able to find what I think is an Operator's Manual or something, but not a genuine factory service manual. Any suggestions on where to point my browser on that one? I really can't let myself go too far into this thing without one, lest I become the aforementioned 12-pack mechanic

Thanks in advance for any replies - I hope to be able to give back someday!

 

[havasuboatman]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

Suggestion number one; Keep to the point with your questions. very important.
My personal experience with those boats is I have had two of them come into my shop. The second one today, actually.
BOTH OF THEM HAD ELECTRICAL FIRE DAMAGE.
BOTH OF THEM CAUGHT FIRE WHEN THE VOLTAGE REGULATOR FRIED.
The first one had similar symptoms as yours. It was loose fuel lines on the draw side of the fuel pump, sucking air into the lines.
The one I got today, lost power up river and had to be towed. Besides that, I have no information as I haven't given the boat much of a look and haven't spoken to the owner yet.
The first boat caught fire while cranking. Extended cranking. I would bet money this new one the same thing happened, since he had to wait for two hours to be towed.
Personally, I wouldn't own one. The ride sucks, there is no room. And my personal opinion of them as of today is they are unsafe.
Take that for what it's worth, after all, I have only seen two. 5 years apart. Both fire damaged by the same componant

 

[Daley]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

Ok, good call on the rambling post. First things first - these electrical fires you mentioned have me a bit nervous now. I've never seen this mentioned anywhere else, but that does NOT mean I don't believe you - you see more boats in a week than I do in a year I'm sure. Do I replace the regulator or just pray? Of course I have an extinguisher, but I sure as heck don't wanna ever have to use it!

Thanks for chiming in btw!

 

[ziggy]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

i've never seen yer toy at all, so no experience like hbm. had me a couple a jet skis though. ya got what ya got. so enjoy it. 1st thing ya need is the oem service manual. the shop manual, not the owners manual. it'll have the specs to set your engine to. pm to do, and if like other merc s/m's, some trouble shooting guides in them too.
the wear ring is the inside surface where the impeller is. this ring must be a perfect cyl. or sub standard performance can be expected. the impeller is most important too. it should be ding free. my last ski, i got cavitation burns on the impeller after only 95hrs of use. the wear ring also got burned. there are very tight tolerances in jet pumps. this needs to be confirmed by proper methods using yer oem service manual.
best i can say. is put it to oem specs and your likely to be able to have some fun with it. i've seen a awlfull lot of 2 stroke jetskis that smoke like there's no tomorrow.. i had one. and lots of smoke was normal.. these are old style plain ol 2 strokes i talk of. carbs and pistons, maybe oil injection. but not variable oil injection..
best i can do for ya. good luck..

 

[Don S]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

It's a Force outboard powerhead sitting on top of a jet pump inside a boat. DUMB thing to do since it meets no standards of fuel or fire control like an IO. Just an outboard inside the boat. DANGER WILL ROBINSON.

Moving to Force outboard forums

 

[Daley]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

Thanks for all the replies guys - keep 'em coming! The one thing I'm most lost on is the whole jet-drive unit. Ok, so the wear ring is held to close tolerances, but mine looks pretty scored radially - gouged even. If tolerances are that close, it seems quite evident that I'm looking forward to replacing at least that, if not the impeller too. Darnit this is getting to be more than I wanted to get into, but if I'm gonna do anything it's gonna get done right.

 

[roscoe]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

Seafoam is good, lots of Seafoam.


"However, it has only reached planing speed twice, and each time it was short-lived."

So something is wrong if it won't move out.

Check compression and check spark.

 

[Daley]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

I thought about those two suggestions too (and will probably still take your advice), but the only thing that makes me think that it's more fuel/carb-related is the fact that it did work, even if only for a short time, and then never got back to full-speed.

As for the Seafoam, I have a good feeling I'm gonna fog the CRAP out of the lake - any advice or stories on this one? Has anyone run into trouble with the law for this? I really don't want to damage my friendly status with my neighbors, so doing at the house is pretty much out of the question.

 

[Daley]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

Just wanted to post back a little update. I was up late last night (couldn't sleep), so I spent some time doing some "general clean-up" work that needed to be done. I don't have a compression-tester yet, and even turning it over to check spark/compression would have pi**ed off the woman enough to have me sleeping in the boat.

What I did find is that there are several vacuum lines running along the starboard side of the motor, and they were routed as such that they ran behind (and rubbed against) some moving linkage - obviously a bad idea. I don't know why I didn't notice that before, but there's a spot in the hose that wore through. It appears that when the throttle was in the lower operating range, the linkage kinda blocked the hole but when I went WOT, it moved away from the hose thereby opening the hole and causing my lack of performance.

For good measure, I went and bought a bunch of replacement hose today and will replace all of 'em. Not sure when I'll get the chance to drop 'er in, but it should be within the next couple days.

For what it's worth, this seemed like a factory route (or someone did a real good job of trying to clean something up) because even though it was a bad route, the hoses were bundled nicely and looked as though they came out of the spray booth with the motor from the factory.



P.S. This seems way obvious, but do y'all think it's enough to cause what I'm experiencing or could there be other contributing factors? If I just got by with a few bucks on hose, I'd prefer to hold off on a compression-tester. However, if y'all think that a leaking vacuum line isn't enough to cause this, I won't hesitate to go buy one.

 

[Daley]

Re: Opinions? Suggestions? Advice?

Just wanted to post a follow-up to say that the boat's running GREAT now. To recap, the boat came with the fuel tank full of whatever was in there - presumably gas, but who knows. The oil reservoir was full as well, but again - who knows what was in there. The boat started reliably every single time (provided the battery's charge was good), but didn't get above about 2800 RPM (don't have a tach, just going by ear) and wouldn't plane to save its life. No spitting or sputtering, just no power.

I replaced some bad vacuum lines, flushed the tank, changed the plugs and drank a few beers. None of this seemed to make a noticeable difference (the beer made me feel better temporarily), so the only thing left was to dive into the carbs. Having had my fingers in enough motorcycle and car carbs, I wasn't afraid of these at all, but wasn't really looking forward to the opportunity either. Well, hindsight is *still* 20/20, so I learned that I should have done this from the start. The boat now just about jumps out of the water when I put the hammer down, and has no problem catching air over anything bigger than a small wake.

After getting some good tubing in last night, we were on our way back to the launch when I noticed that at WOT I seem to have a slight cavitation (and therefore loss of power) issue, so I'm going to look a little closer at my wear ring and impeller, because if I remember correctly those radial gouges aren't supposed to be there.

Assuming that's all it is, I'm GOLDEN!

Thanks again to everyone that pitched in - I guess I knew all along what I needed to do, I just needed the motivation from everyone here.

Happy boating - I know I am!